


Memory and Memoring

by Merkwerkee



Category: Void Jumpers (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28290084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merkwerkee/pseuds/Merkwerkee
Summary: Tag receives some interesting news after he recovers from a bout with hallucinogenic mushroom spores.
Kudos: 1





	Memory and Memoring

Tag was silent for a long moment as Schlacta floated away to fiddle with something on her cart.

He’d known, intellectually, that the trials would be dangerous. None of the rifts they’d closed so far had been defended by anything less than deadly force - Bryn had died on the Water planet, though his mind shied away from the thought. And yet some small part of him had thought that the memories would be just that; memories. Thoughts of the distant past, just shades of things that had already happened. Tag had a great deal of experience in sifting through _other_ peoples’ thoughts, and he’d never been harmed by what he’d found - it was only his own memories that impaled him like spikes, and left him writhing on the hot skewers.

The only exception had been F̸̧̧̈̄̈̚i̴̧̤̥̱̪̹̱̪͇͛͆̾̉̽̆̉̅̽͛̓͊̈͒́̾̇̕ņ̴̣̰͍͓̝̤͙̾̓̾̏̈͊̐̃͊̏̈̑̈̐͋̓̚͝͝b̶̨̛̠̹̯̲͓̘̜̠͇͖̲̱̗̀͂̈̆̑̊́̂͘̕͝a̶̧͍̟͍̮͈̙̞̲̟͍͇͇̺̮̪̒̇̐̂̎̈́̅̈́̆̽͝ç̸͔̳̣̠͎̗̝̻͓̝̊̔̅̓̐̾͛͐̇͗̍͘͜͝͝͝h̵̢̢̛͈̩̪̩̗͙͙̗͎̟͓̑́̌̋̎̔̏̌͌̈́͗́̅͌̂́͘͝͝ - touching the dead parallel’s memories had been…painful. Excruciating was too strong a word, and yet that was the kind of pain that they had been made of. The memories themselves had been twisted and distorted by centuries of necromancy; Tag was pretty sure the ghost hadn’t had any clearer views of the memories than Tag himself had gotten. Tag couldn’t be sure if it was the necromancy or something else, but those memories had had sharp edges that lingered in the back of his mind if he thought about them for too long.

But this…Tag let his eyes slide over to where Bryn was rubbing at her side and wincing. Scorch marks on the deep red armor - the same color as the robes she had been wearing when they came to this Continuum-forsaken place - lead in crazed lines to spiral burns that started where the armor stopped. They oozed a clear, if slightly yellowish, fluid, and he couldn’t help but wince in sympathy when a too-rough touch brought forth another dribble. The Mare’s magic had been much more powerful than any of them were expecting, even after the druid had warned them, and Bryn had taken the brunt of it.

Tag flinched away from thoughts of the druid and what her final fate had been, and walked over to Bryn like he could escape his thoughts by moving while fishing around in his satchel. A few stray coins, a knife he was pretty sure wasn’t one he’d started with, a few other odds and ends…his hand closed on the cold glass of the bottle just as he got to Bryn’s side, and he pulled it out to offer it to his Summoner.

“Um, if you want, Bryn…I-I do have a health potion.” He noticed Rex looking their way with an expression he couldn’t quite parse on her face, and bobbed a quick nod at her. “Rex, obviously I don’t mean to step on your toes, I know that you’re a skilled healer, but I don’t know if those are, uhm, y'know, things you wanna save up on.”

Rex’s expression shifted to something more thoughtful as Bryn took the health potion out of his hands, and Tag felt a sickening kind of dread in his gut. There was only one thing he could think of that might bring that expression to her face; him exploding at the druid in the swamp. He’d reacted more than acted, and while she had been rude that druid certainly hadn’t deserved what he’d done to her.

Tag let his gaze slide away from Rex’s face. “I’m a little embarrassed about…my behaviour and I don’t know that we need to talk about it but,” he waved away the twin expressions of concern both Bryn and Rex were levelling at him now, and cleared his throat. “ _Any_ way, I’m just trying to get my head in the game.” He cudgeled his mind, trying desperately to come up with something to say next and finding nothing, memories that lurked just out of sight to ambush him chasing away words like a cat after birds. “Um. So.”

Bryn paused, her hand on the cork of the potion bottle like she’d been just about to open it. She looked over at Tag, with a worried little furrow in her brow that Tag felt immediately ashamed of putting there. “Do you…remember anything?” she asked slowly, and Tag’s panic kicked up another notch as memories rose up like a quagmire to swallow him whole.

“Um. Yeah. What, I, I,” _blood dripping, too-warm hanks of hair between his fingers, a terrified expression frozen forever, eyes darkened in death reflecting a monster_ , “I killed a druid.” He’d yelled, taken his bow and shot. The druid’s head had been in his hand, he’d carried it over to the Mare. “And yeah, she was a little mean to us, but - ”

“You really didn’t. You didn’t kill the druid,” Bryn cut across him, trading a look with Rex, and Tag’s panicked brain grabbed on to the words and presented him with more - memories.

“I know, I didn’t just kill her it was a fucking slaughterhouse.” _Blood everywhere, staining the mud to rust as the head was in his grip_. The druid was dead and there was so much blood - more than when Bryn had died - and he hadn’t cared. He’d been at peace; a person’s _head_ had been _in his hands_ , and he’d been at fucking _peace_. “I mean, her head was in my hands and I just - I looked into - ” _cold dead eyes staring at him accusatorily. Monster. You did this you monster. Nothing human about you, nothing good left. Monster monster **monster**_ -

Tag’s gorge rose spasmodically, and his hand went to his throat as he swallowed around the sudden sourness of his mouth. “Sorry. Sorry. Yeah.” He looked down, unable to meet their eyes.

Bryn shifted but he couldn’t look up at her. “Oh-kay.”

Rex tapped her toe sharply and Tag glanced over in spite of himself. Rex’s expression was…amused? After what he’d _done?_ “You didn’t kill the druid. That didn’t happen. You were as high as balls.”

Tag blinked.

“Wh- uh, what? I didn’t kill it? What?” He couldn’t believe it. It had felt so real - _the warm blood dripping onto his boots with tiny splashes decorating his pale shins, the body-warmth of the hair between his fingers, the feeling of the knife sliding home_ \- but even more than that, what he’d done with it. The druid had been a living, thinking being and he’d just - he’d just _punted_ her head across the filthy ground, sticks and muck tangling in the hair as it had bounced. He hadn’t been able to care at the time, but -

“No, you just maimed her,” Sam interjected sardonically, and Tag turned his bewildered gaze on the older man. _Maimed_ her? Was she all right?

Bryn’s voice cut through the panicked spiral of his thoughts. “Yeah. And you _didn’t_ have a love affair with a horse either.”

Tag blinked, momentarily thrown for a loop by her words. The Mare…It was hard to think past the strangely vivid sense-memories of the druid’s severed head, but he remembered the mushrooms, too. He remembered the song - it was hard not to start sub-vocalizing the melody, at once foreign beyond words and as familiar to him as his own heartbeat. Now that he wasn’t listening to it, feeling it in his chest, it reminded him uncomfortably of the songs sung by the Others in the desert. He’d resisted singing that time, refusing to let himself synchronize with the strange choir, but this time he’d just accepted it, for whatever reason. In that song, he’d found a point of harmony with the mushrooms; when he’d eaten them, he’d found a sense of _belonging_.

A wave of elegiac sadness swept through him, strong enough to take his breath away. Tag remembered the worms on the Water planet, remembered feeling the sense of belonging they had attempted to confer, and this had been so far beyond that that to even compare the two would be like comparing limp lettuce to a four course meal. Where the worm had used that sense like a weapon, forcibly _changing_ his mind for him to align with its wishes, the mushrooms had _welcomed_ him, letting him find the balance of his experiences to theirs. It wasn’t love, Tag was pretty sure that kind of emotion was too complex for even a magical fungus. Instead it was a sense of _rightness_ , of a puzzle piece in the correct position in a jigsaw. The perfect alignment of all that he was with all the mushrooms were, without mistake or regret or doubt.

He’d asked the Mare, he remembered that now. He’d asked the Mare and she’d said…she’d said…something, something about him finding the ground only if he gave up flying? The memories were at once crystal-clear and hopelessly muddled, and he had a nagging feeling that he wouldn’t be able to sort through them properly without time to meditate. Meditation hadn’t been his least favorite activity at the monastery - that award went to the time Toman had sent him to help the carpenters rebuild the furniture he’d allegedly broken during an escapade; he’d hammered both thumbs black and blue before the day was out - but while he’d been decent at it then it had been a while since he’d done it and he really wasn’t looking forward to trying it now.

Tag was brought out of his thoughts with a bump by Sam speaking up. “You just rode her.”

“Oh.” Tag blinked for a couple seconds as he rewound back to the conversation at hand.

“I guess you win some, you lose some, right?”


End file.
